Space Age

With a splash of champagne at a ceremony at the Explorer's Club Wednesday, millionaire Malcolm Forbes christened a space-age balloon explorers said could be the first to travel around the world. The balloon gondola, a pressurized 6-foot-high capsule, will carry British balloonist Julian Nott, 41, and an unnamed co-pilot in the fifth attempt to balloon around the world in March. If successful, the trip will take 18 days at an altitude of 38,000 to 40,000 feet where jet streams...

Situation: My place is too small for a guest room Solution: Use double-duty furniture to create extra sleeping space When your apartment or condo is on the small side, you may feel like you don't have enough room for your own things, let alone somebody else's. It can be hard to find extra space for overnight guests (assuming they're not going to share your comfy bed), but there are ways to set up your out-of-town friends and family in style without cramping your own. The days of bulky, uncomfortable...

Give some people a simple task and they'll turn it into a major undertaking. And nowhere is that better exemplified than in the space shuttle Cougar One which will "blast off" on a 24-hour mission Thursday from the Clay Elementary School in Woodstock. About two weeks in the making, Cougar One--named after the school mascot--is a 22-foot by 8-foot replica of a NASA space shuttle, built by a volunteer group of parents and teachers at the home of 5th-grade teacher Gay...

Iran announced its first successful satellite launch Tuesday, a step into the space age as well as a showy demonstration of firepower amid continued concerns about the Islamic republic's nuclear program and regional ambitions. The satellite, called Omid, or "Hope," was apparently launched into orbit late Monday or early Tuesday using an Iranian-made Safir-2 carrier rocket, the official Islamic Republic News Agency, or IRNA, reported. A U.S. Pentagon official and other analysts confirmed the...

By Richard Rothschild, a copy editor on the Tribune sports desk | October 7, 2007

Rare are the times when a community, a nation, a world can say without hyperbole, "The future starts today." But that was the wondrous development 50 years ago last Thursday when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first satellite to go beyond Earth's atmosphere and orbit the planet. Sputnik is the first world event I remember. In Miss Kempter's 2nd-grade class, I realized this was a big deal when she took time from our usual lessons to sketch a picture of Sputnik on the blackboard.

Shuffling through his physical therapy exercises at Weiss Memorial Hospital last week, 81-year-old Gene Johnson did not appear particularly bionic to the casual observer. But beneath the complicated brace on his right leg was a newly implanted device that sounds more like science fiction than medical wonder: a titanium femur. The metal bone won't give Johnson, a salesman from Princeton in north-central Illinois, the ability to kick down steel doors or leap buildings in a single...

There is no one place you can say is Cornwall. There are dozens. Stand wind-blown and trembling on the wild wall of north coast cliffs, Atlantic breakers exploding in fury against their first obstacle for 3,000 miles, and you might shout over the grind of the terrible undertow: "This is Cornwall!" You`d be right. But north of St. Austell the skyline turns to Alps-startling white peaks in a dead world, jagged craters and livid pools among dirtying white cones. For 200 years miners have...

The passengers wore flight suits and nervous grins. As soothing music played in the background, a smiling woman on a video cautioned them about motion sickness, falling on one's head and the No. 1 rule of the weightless flight ahead of them: "No jumping." "I'm scared," admitted Rob Rand, a St. Paul science teacher. He and 53 other middle and high school teachers were guests of the Northrop Grumman Foundation aboard a specially converted Boeing 727 that rose and dipped in the sky above...

The passengers wore flight suits and nervous grins. As soothing music played in the background, a smiling woman on a video cautioned them about motion sickness, falling on one's head and the No. 1 rule of the weightless flight ahead of them: "No jumping." "I'm scared," admitted Rob Rand, a St. Paul science teacher. He and 53 other middle and high school teachers were guests of the Northrop Grumman Foundation aboard a specially converted Boeing 727 that rose and dipped in the sky above...

Donning a crisp brown shirt and tie, his thick silver hair parted just so, Alfred Denison began his workday the way he had the few thousand that came before it: on a mission to put back what had been lost. In this instance, it was a prosthetic leg that could withstand, well, pretty much anything. "After I get out of the canoe and get to the helicopter pad, I'm going to have to walk through some jungle," Sycamore resident Roger Brink said. "So you...

Donning a crisp brown shirt and tie, his thick silver hair parted just so, Alfred Denison began his workday the way he had the few thousand that came before it: on a mission to put back what had been lost. In this instance, it was a prosthetic leg that could withstand, well, pretty much anything. "After I get out of the canoe and get to the helicopter pad, I'm going to have to walk through some jungle," Sycamore resident Roger Brink said. "So you...

Byron Morgan, a NASA filmmaker who created award-winning documentaries that imparted lasting images of the space program, died Feb. 13 of pulmonary failure at Suburban Medical Center in Paramount, Calif. He was 87 and lived in Long Beach, Calif. Mr. Morgan was the son of a Hollywood screenwriter and served as a naval aviator in World War II and the Korean War. His background proved ideal when he joined the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, the predecessor of NASA, in 1957.

By Article by John Husar, The Tribune`s outdoor columnist | November 2, 1986

The spring sun warms the thin snow as the dogs cross the rocky shore of a cove beyond the Northwest Territories hamlet of Baker Lake. We stop to stretch, gingerly rising from our sleds. A pile of rocks nearby has been formed into a scarecrow-like trail marker, an inukshuk in Eskimo parlance. "I don`t know why that's there," one of the native dogsled masters says, scratching his stubbly chin. "Maybe it means there is good fishing here." A fisherman would have to hammer through five feet of subarctic ice...

Anthony Tuzzolino helped design and build more than 40 devices that were shot into space to deliver data on cosmic rays and other interplanetary phenomena. Dr. Tuzzolino, 76, died of complications from lung cancer Wednesday, Jan. 9, at his north suburban home, said his daughter Nancy. Dr. Tuzzolino received a doctorate degree in physics from the University of Chicago in 1957 and went on to spend his entire career at the Hyde Park school, retiring in 2006 as a...

CSX Rail Transport, which provides rail-freight service to 20 states and Canada, said it will build a $12.5 million computerized complex at Jacksonville, Fla., to dispatch trains along its 15,000-mile core system. A company official described the center as "a major step in the application of space-age technology to railroads."

By Charles Krauthammer, a syndicated columnist based in Washington: Washington Post Writers Group | October 8, 2007

Fifty years ago, America was shaken out of technological complacency by a beeping 180-pound aluminum ball orbiting overhead. Sputnik was a shock because we had always assumed that Russia was nothing but a big, lumbering and all-brawn bear. He could wear down the Nazis and produce mountains of steel but had none of our savvy or sophistication. Then one day we wake up and he beats us into space, placing overhead the first satellite to orbit the Earth since God placed the moon where it could...

The Astrodome is obsolete and John Glenn is not, which may be some of the best news to come out of an otherwise dismal American year. Glenn, 77, is scheduled to be shot into space Thursday aboard the shuttle Discovery. This trip comes 36 years after Glenn climbed into the Friendship 7 capsule and electrified the world by becoming the first American to orbit the Earth. Meanwhile, as Glenn gets ready to return to space, the Astrodome is holding on by its fingernails --...

By Richard Rothschild, a copy editor on the Tribune sports desk | October 7, 2007

Rare are the times when a community, a nation, a world can say without hyperbole, "The future starts today." But that was the wondrous development 50 years ago last Thursday when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first satellite to go beyond Earth's atmosphere and orbit the planet. Sputnik is the first world event I remember. In Miss Kempter's 2nd-grade class, I realized this was a big deal when she took time from our usual lessons to sketch a picture of Sputnik on the blackboard.

Eightball & MJG Space Age 4 Eva (JCOR/Interscope) With its title building off the name of a popular song from their 1995 release, Eightball & MJG's fifth full-length album features the pioneering Memphis rappers doing what they do best: rapping about sometimes dicey male-female relationships, lower-class life in the South, their personal growth and having fun. The smooth-flowing Eightball is the more lyrically nimble of the pair, with MJG...

Randy Van Horne, whose Randy Van Horne Singers performed the theme songs for "The Flintstones," "The Jetsons" and several other popular TV cartoons of the 1960s, has died. He was 83. Mr. Van Horne died of cancer Sept. 26 at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, Calif., said his son, Mark. In the 1940s, Mr. Van Horne began his career in Los Angeles as a studio musician. In the '50s, he formed The Encores with three other musicians. When they...